South Korean shooter Lee Gun-hyeok wins gold at Asian Games

NAGOYA, Japan, Oct. 1 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's Lee Gun-hyeok won the gold medal in the men's individual rapid fire pistol shooting at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games on Thursday, becoming the first double gold medalist in shooting.

Lee edged out China's Su Lianbofan in shoot-off in the event's final at Aichi Prefectural General Shooting Gallery in Toyota, some 25 kilometers east of Nagoya, the main host city.

It is Lee's second gold medal at the ongoing competition after winning the team event earlier in the day.

Lee completed South Korea's first sweep of the individual and team title in this rapid fire event in 12 years.

The 25m rapid fire final was contested over eight series of five shots, with a four-second limit on each series. Each shot within the 9.7 zone was a hit that counted as one point, and each miss of the zone was zero point.

The elimination of the lowest-scoring finalists began after the third series and continued until the eighth series.

Lee was leading the final through three series with 13 points, with the other South Korean in the eight-man final, Yoon Seo-yeong, in a tie for fourth with 11 points.

However, after the fourth series, Yoon was eliminated as the sixth-place shooter at that point.

Lee scored a perfect five points in the fifth series and continued to lead the competition with 21 points, just one ahead of Su.

Lee pushed his lead to two at 25-23 after the sixth series.

However, Lee managed three points to Su's four in the seventh series, as the gap narrowed to one at 28-27.

With Ghulam Mustafa Bashir of Pakistan gone after the seventh series to take the bronze, Su caught Lee in the eighth series with five points, as Lee got only four points, leaving the two knotted at an Asian record score of 32 points.

In the first shoot-off, both shooters scored four points, sending the gold medal duel to another shoot-off.

Su finally blinked, managing just two hits, and Lee clinched his gold medal with five points.

South Korea closed out shooting with three gold medals, five silver medals and four bronze medals.